The Big Question: Which industries will robotics likely disrupt?

"How can we get robots to interact with people in a more humanised way? All around the world, social robots are being developed to augment, extend and facilitate the 'high-touch' engagement humans provide and which we each thrive from. The early results have been intriguingly positive and, in the next decade, it will be increasingly possible to build sophisticated social robots at affordable prices. As mobile computing develops, and the cost of sensors, processors and wireless communication falls, domestic-service robots will become a reality. Social robots won't replace human networks, but will supplement and strengthen them.

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Their development has the potential to impact healthcare, education and aging, and will be at the centre of connected homes. The internet of things will run through robotics."

Nicolaus Radford Principal investigator, Dexterous Robotics Lab, NASA

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"Service-oriented markets in the energy sector are where robots will perform 3-D (dull, dirty or dangerous) activities. This will free up human workers for the higher cognitive activities and remove them from unsafe conditions. In healthcare, human mobility and rehabilitation, this will be the decade of the exoskeleton, powered orthotic and prosthetic devices. As human-machine interfaces become more comfortable and control techniques extend device life and performance, a tipping point will lead to ubiquity."

Yvonne Rogers Director, UCL Interaction Centre

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"Robotics will become more mainstream in warfare, manufacturing and logistics. Flying drones will replace frontline armies; lines of deft robotic arms will assemble clothes and cars; and all-seeing robots will pack our weekly online grocery shopping in bags without breaking an egg. But the sex industry will see the greatest changes. Combining augmented reality, wearables and AI, new forms of social interaction and artificial pleasure will come to the fore. They will be affordable and usable for people from paraplegics to prisoners."

Dennis Hong Founding director, Robotics

& Mechanisms Laboratory, UCLA

"Robots are tools -- intelligent machines, but still tools. People talk about robots rebelling against humans or taking away our jobs.

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But rebellion is pure sci-fi, and the rise of the machine will mean the rise of new kinds of jobs for humans, just like those created by the invention of the car (mechanics, car insurers, petrol station attendants, salespeople, etc). Robots have been very successfully used in factory automation, saving human workers from the mundane. The next generation of robots may take away more of such jobs, but they will create new ones."

Daniel Wolpert Professor of Engineering, Cambridge University

"Computers can now beat grandmasters at chess, but there is still no robot that can match the dexterity of a five-year-old. We will finally achieve this in the next decade. There are great challenges -- we still lack sensors that can match the abilities of human skin, and we are yet to unravel the algorithms that the brain uses to learn an incredible range of tasks. In the same way that the prehensile thumb led to human evolutionary advantage, creating such a dexterous, self-learning and universal manipulation device will be transformative."

This article was first published in the August 2014 issue of WIRED magazine